NY senators back reconciliation on health-reform bill

Both of New York's U.S. senators support using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to push health-care legislation through the Senate in spite of unified Republican opposition.

Chris McKenna

Both of New York's U.S. senators support using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to push health-care legislation through the Senate in spite of unified Republican opposition.

What's more, they want the bill to include a new government-run health insurance program, or "public option," a proposal embodied in the House version of the legislation but dropped from the Senate version last year to appease moderate Democrats.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was one of four senators who wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Feb. 16 to support both the reconciliation approach and restoration of the public option. Other Democrats later added their names, and Sen. Charles Schumer became the 17th senator to sign the letter.

Reconciliation would allow Democratic senators to pass a health-care bill with 51 votes, instead of the 60 they ordinarily would need to overcome a Republican filibuster. The recent victory of Republican Scott Brown in a race for the seat long held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy deprived Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority and forced them to consider other strategies.

Republicans strongly oppose the prospect of a reconciliation vote, arguing that such methods are never used for legislation as sweeping as what Democrats envision. During the health-care summit in Washington on Thursday, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee demanded at the outset that President Barack Obama renounce the use of reconciliation. Obama refused.

Democrats scoff at the notion that using reconciliation would be new or inappropriate.

"There is substantial Senate precedent for using reconciliation to enact important health-care legislation," Gillibrand and the three other senators wrote in their letter to Reid, citing the Children's Health Insurance Program and other examples.

Democrats are weighing other options to enact their health-reform goals: Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, told the Times Herald-Record last week that passing the pieces that both parties agree on may be the most realistic option in an election year. And, just days later, he and his fellow Democrats celebrated as the House overwhelmingly passed one such provision: a bill lifting the exemption of health-insurance companies from anti-trust rules.

But spokesmen for Hall and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley, said they support Senate Democrats using reconciliation if needed to enact health reform.